I love a good boycott. There are few things more satisfying than fully expressing yourself in the only way that most people — who actually have power in America — care about; that is to say, we stop buying their products.

Boycotts have somewhat digressed from their muckraking heyday (I mean, this country was more or less founded on them), but they gain traction from time to time. It’s no surprise that one such boycott has been leveled against BP. The British just don’t seem to get anything right, do they?

And while I wholeheartedly support the use of economic force against BP for the events that have unfolded over the last two months, we need to make sure that how we respond is effective and that we’re not causing collateral damage ourselves. There’s more than enough of that currently going on in the Gulf.

Two weeks after the spill, as I was driving along, I realized my tank was low. The sign on the first gas station I saw was emblazoned with a big, shiny BP flower. So I kept driving. After finally finding a non-BP-stamped gas station — which was far more difficult than you’d think it should be — I happily filled the tank and was on my way.

In the immortal words of Borat, “Great success.” Right?

Not so much.

It wasn’t until after I got home and started surfing across Internet sites that I began thinking about what just happened. After some research, I stumbled upon an unfortunate reality: BP doesn’t directly own any of the 11,000 gas stations here in the United States that sell its petroleum.

What’s worse is that it supplies oil to a good number of gas stations that don’t even have a big, flowery sign announcing that station’s affiliation with BP. On top of all that is the crude fact that oil, as a traded commodity, can easily switch hands many times before winding up at a gas station.

Needless to say, I went from feeling triumphant to duped pretty fast. It was disappointing. (Though, now that I think about it, that’s happened kind of a lot since November 2008.)

The question, then, becomes one weighing costs against benefits. The fact of the matter is that, economically, a BP boycott hurts the independent local station owners much more than it does the corporation. Even though BP might take a negligible loss in profit, it will still sell refined petroleum to non-BP affiliated gas stations, and it will continue selling crude on the open market.

Thus, even though BP cut corners in pursuit of profit and left us to pay the price, this spill was ultimately avoidable. And despite assurances it would never happen, a boycott is not particularly productive solution (even if it does help us sleep better at night). The real way to hold BP accountable isn’t an ineffectual boycott that will affect local business owners far more than hold the overseers responsible. This doesn’t actually address the problem; similarly, neither does an escrow fund or an Oval Office reprimand.

There is no short-term solution. There is only a long-term necessity: that we stop burning fossil fuels.

So before we rush to boycott local BP-affiliated gas stations, let’s encourage them to switch suppliers. Before we take to the streets, let’s ride the bus and carpool. Before we can demand an energy revolution, we have to throw our Boston Tea Party. And although the images of a poisoned Gulf of Mexico and a stained Boston Harbor may look similar, as a nation, we aren’t ready to throw in the crates just yet.